First off, let's make one thing clear, you are going
to have a very hard time getting this album! It has
been out of print for almost a decade now, and wasn't
distributed very well by the label (Rough Trade indeed)
to begin with. That being said, this is probably my
favorite album made by a former member of the seminal
punk band, Hüsker Dü. It is a "Rock Opera"
of the first order, teeming with catchy epics that are
at once challenging (for rock music) and simple. "Pompeii"
is also filled with references to Gravity's Rainbow
and the underlying symbolic order. The references are
fairly obvious with titles such as "Woton",
"Wernher Von Braun" and subject matter ranging
from Nazi Germany to the Space Program (Rockets are
Rockets after all, aren't they?). The wordplay is also
Pynchon-esque, most notably in the song "Space
Jazz" which is a spoken word bit over a fiesty
bit of psychedelic Rock. Grant Hart also has a singsong
quality to his lyrics that reminds me of Pynch's musical
interludes. Unfortunately, there are no (overt) dick
jokes. Pick it up if you can find the damned thing.

Sean Lanksbury

CD

NOVA MOB
(With Grant Hart, formerly of Hüsker Dü)
The Last Days Of Pompeii (1991)